


his life is under the gun (he's got a reason to pray)

by Wallyallens



Category: Constantine (TV), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:09:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23828884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallyallens/pseuds/Wallyallens
Summary: prompt from @drogna: TimeBlazer + one of them is inured.Rip Hunter is facing a stack of paperwork and a headache, when John Constantine calls for help. That gets rid of the paperwork, at least.
Relationships: John Constantine/Rip Hunter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 57





	his life is under the gun (he's got a reason to pray)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Drogna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drogna/gifts).



> title from 'under the gun' by the killers

There was a stack of paperwork on Rip’s desk. He walked into his office at 8pm, gave it one look, and then used it as a coaster instead. Pulling a bottle of scotch from his desk drawer and a glass, he half filled the tumbler and ignored the way it magnified the red letters URGENT on the paper beneath it. Despite inventing the Time Bureau for the entire purpose of having rules and accountability, sometimes he really wished that it didn’t come with quite so much red tape and paperwork.

It kept important work from being done, when you had to wait 5-7 business days for approval. Sometimes, you needed to act first and justify it later. Sometimes, if you didn’t act, the timeline fractured, the bad guys got away, things fell apart . . . sometimes, you needed to be more like –

_No,_ he didn’t miss them. He _didn’t_.

Rip missed the Legends on nights like these, even if he stubbornly refused to admit it. They might have been as subtle as a brick to the head, but sometimes a brick to the head was exactly what was needed to stop a time pirate escaping with a powerful artefact of world-altering levels.

Taking a swig of his drink, he groaned and started to organise his desk. A part of him itched, reading reports of things that needed to be done, as soon as they got red stamped. There were people out there affecting the timeline, a black market for artefacts . . . hell, there was even the time glitches to start resolving. Dozens of reports scattered across his desk told of everything that he should be doing. Rip fidgeted as he read, fingers twitching for something to do. A part of him missed being an agent, out there, fighting for the timeline. He wasn’t sure where he stood anymore. Or more accurately – where he sat at a desk, organising where other people went to make field reports. One report in particular caught his eye.

San Francisco, 1906. Just after the earthquake.

In the destruction, there were reports of a monster being awakened from under the earth.

He could be there in minutes, just to check it out. Rip could find out if there was anything to the stories. And if there was a monster . . . it would be irresponsible to let it wander loose, wouldn’t it? He could just pop back and check, just to be sure. It would take no time at all . . .

Rip was saved from dangerous, rebellious thoughts by his phone buzzing on his desk. There was no caller ID, but he answered anyway, and another voice started talking immediately on the other end of the line.

“Rip, mate – don’t hang up, okay? Jus’ hear me out. I need your help.”

“What the hell do you want, Constantine?”

“Well, funny choice of words there . . .”

Closing his eyes for a second, Rip internally sighed. Things always ended the same way with John. Jumping from one fight to another, Rip began mentally preparing himself for the night he was now destined to have, and the extra paperwork that it would generate later. Really, he should just hang up and save himself now.

“Where are you?” Rip asked.

He was across the planet in minutes, using a time courier to travel to the location that John gave him. London air filled his lungs, smelling faintly of smoke and river water. It felt depressingly like home.

Rip stepped out of the portal to see a dingy alley and row of warehouses. There was some kind of universal law that if something mysterious and/or illegal was happening in a city, it would inevitably take place in an empty warehouse with bad strip lighting and convenient boxes to hide behind. Rip wasn’t sure why this was, but he knew exactly where to head when he walked through the large metal doors, pulling his gun out ready to use if needed.

There was some kind of pentagram on the floor and the strip light overhead was clicking and making a soft _ping_ sound as it flickered on and off.

Turning around, Rip peered until he noticed a large pile of boxes on the other side of the room. Logic dictated that this was where he had to go. As Rip walked towards it, John came into view, sprawled out in the middle of the pile which had broken his fall. There was a cigarette in his lips, which twisted into a smile when he saw Rip.

“Giss us a hand, would you love?” John said. There was blood trailing from the corner of his mouth, dripping onto the white of his shirt. He held out a hand, which Rip reluctantly took, pulling the other man to his feet as he looked over his shoulder.

“What’s the situation?” Rip asked. “I’ll need a threat level and whatever you know about what we’re fighting.”

“Oh _that_ -” John waved a hand. “Wendigo. Already dealt with it, keep your knickers on.”

Feeling slightly put out that the fight was over, Rip frowned. “Then what did you call me for?”

“This,” John said.

Then he lifted his coat, revealing a spreading patch of blood around his side. John swayed on his feet slightly with the movement, making drops of fresh blood fall onto the concrete below them. The blood looked black in the light. There was a lot of it. Reeling, Rip’s eyes bulged at the sight, holstering his gun immediately and turning to John.

“Bloody hell.”

“You said it, mate-”

“We need to get you somewhere to dress that, now,” Rip said. Reaching out, he grabbed John’s arm and slung it over his shoulder to support the other man. Staggering, Rip took most of John’s weight, telling him out of the corner of his mouth. “Put pressure on that. I’ll take you to the hospital-”

“-No hospitals.”

“I’m sure bleeding out in an alley is much preferable,” Rip said sarcastically.

“More rock n’ roll,” John grinned with pink teeth, “Jus’ take me home, Rip. I’ve got some stuff there, I’ll just need your help to do it. We can play doctors and nurses.”

“Why is it that every time you call, I end up covered in blood and smelling of smoke?”

“So you remember that you had a good night.”

John laughed, but choked off with a wet cough. Feeling worry bloom in his chest, Rip reached for the time courier in his pocket. It meant justifying more than one unauthorised use of it, but it was worth it to get John help sooner. He keyed in the co-ordinates for John’s house, not thinking about how he knew them from memory, and they staggered through the portal.

“Where?” Rip said, looking around the house.

Every time he went to John’s place, it looked slightly different. There had been the time that all of the mirrors had been smashed, the time there were blood sigils on the stairs, or the time a gargoyle butler had appeared to take his coat. That night, it looked more or less ordinary – the wooden floors were free of writing, the light worked when he turned it on, and nothing jumped out of the shadows.

“Livin’ room by the kitchen,” John mumbled. “There’s a first aid bag under the sink.”

Rip managed to manoeuvre John onto the sofa, heaving the other man into the pillows before dashing to the kitchen. He didn’t bother turning the light on, roughly knowing the layout of the house and kitchen by now. Rip had met John not long after he started the Bureau, a few years back, and had spent more than a few nights in the house since then. Running back to the living room, Rip brushed an arm over the coffee table to clear it, knocking stacks of books and papers to the floor and ignoring John’s weak “oi!” before putting the medical bag onto it. Unzipping the bag, Rip searched through a haphazard assortment of bandages and pill bottles. It was chaotic, and he didn’t even want to _know_ what was in the bottle marked ‘werewolf antidote’.

Setting on a bottle of antiseptic liquid first, Rip sat on the edge of the table and turned to John. The other man was on his back, his face paler than it had been before and his forehead glowing with a thin sheen of sweat. John had his eyes closed, and Rip would have recognised the strange feeling that this engendered in him if he wasn’t too busy being worried.

With shaking hands, Rip reached out and lifted John’s shirt.

He wasn’t sure what he was expected. It wasn’t the ugly wound in John’s abdomen, red and inflamed, with old stitches sticking out and torn from the skin. It looked like a recent injury, a few days old at most.

“What’s this?” Rip asked, looking away from the wound and to John’s face.

There was a guilty flush to John’s face as he opened his eyes, admitting sheepishly, “Torn me stitches, ain’t I? Can you fix ‘em?”

“I thought you got this from the Wendigo?”

“Well, technically the Wendigo _did_ re-open it,” John said. The careful way he chose his words was less subtle than he thought it was.

“When did you get this?” Rip asked. Shaking his head slightly, he returned his attention to cleaning the wound, feeling more than a little stung. So John hadn’t even been hurt that night, he just called Rip to fix his stitches from another attack. Ignoring John’s hiss of pain when he pressed a wad of antiseptic onto the skin, Rip quickly made work of disinfecting the space around it and cutting the old stitches out.

“Coupla days ago, on a job. Cockatrice.”

Rip’s brows furrowed. “What’s that?”

“Think Big Bird, but stabbbier.”

_I really should have known better than to ask_ , Rip thought.

There was a small frown playing on his lips as Rip tried to focus on the task at hand. One of the things he missed the most about the Waverider was having Gideon to fix injuries. He knew enough to clean the wound and re-stitch it clumsily, but he couldn’t help thinking that he could heal John entirely, if they were someplace else. All Rip had to go on was his own hands and a med-kit that looked more like an apothecary than anything resembling modern medicine.

“You’re frowning,” John said, his voice slurred.

“I’m concentrating.”

“I have a nurses’ outfit upstairs, if you wanted,” John said. “Its leather, but it’d do the job. And it’d make me feel a lot better to see you in it.”

“I did _not_ need to know that,” Rip replied. A fleeting laugh fought its way to break free, though, lifting the heavy lines from his face for a moment as he worked. The stitches looked more regular as Rip’s hands shook less.

“So that’s a no, then?”

“In your dreams.”

“Oh, it will be,” John said.

Rip didn’t even need to look up to see it; he could _hear_ the smirk in John’s voice. Hell or high water, most often both, John always managed to make him laugh, even when he didn’t feel like it. Especially when he didn’t feel like it. Rip wasn’t immune to brooding, as he had been told by almost everyone that he knew. He had been half a bottle into a bad night the first time that he had met John. One drink led to another and a laugh when he felt like dying, and although John could be a complete bastard sometimes, there was something comforting about his unshakable cavalier attitude.

“You shouldn’t have been out tonight, with an injury like this,” Rip said instead. He tried to keep his voice stern and school his face away from a smile, hearing John sigh above him.

“You sound like Chas.”

“I suppose the original stitches were his handiwork?”

John pouted. “He told me not to go out, too. Tried to tell me what to do like I was a bloody child.”

Something clicked in Rip’s head. “That’s why you called me.”

“Maybe I jus’ wanted to see your pretty face.”

“Maybe you knew that Chas would say I told you so, and wanted another idiot to dupe into enabling you,” Rip corrected. Finishing the stitching, he put the scissors and needle onto the coffee table and leaned back, raising his eyebrows at John, whose pout deepened. “I’ll consider myself honoured to be your back up. Sit up, I’ll need to take your shirt off to bandage that.”

“If you wanted me to take my clothes off, you should have just said so.”

Perking up, John grinned. However, his suave swagger was broken somewhat when he tried to sit and almost fell onto the floor. John’s expression turned into a grimace as Rip had to catch him. Cupping John under the arms, Rip pushed him back onto the sofa with a grunt. A steadying hand on John’s shoulder as the other man panted from the effort of moving, Rip cocked his head to one side and said sarcastically.

“Yes, John, that was very attractive of you.”

“Oh, fuck you,” John replied.

“Not tonight, I don’t think you’d manage it.”

“ _Now_ you get a sense of humour. Typical.”

With a mock scowl, John’s hand dived between the sofa cushions and emerged with a half-crushed pack of cigarettes. He lit up as Rip sat back onto the table, rooting around in the medical bag for some bandages. Using it as an excuse to hide his sly smile, Rip forced his lips back into a straight line as he turned back to John with the bandages.

“If you make another joke about me taking your shirt off, I’m leaving you to bleed out.”

John loosened his tie as Rip unbuttoned his shirt, and between them they managed to get the shirt off without too much bloodshed. Every time he moved, John winced. Despite his pretence, he was obviously in pain, and Rip noticed every sharp intake of breath and twitch of the eye.

Unfortunately, to get the bandage around John’s waist, Rip had to lean with one knee on the sofa to lean around. This left him hovering, his face a few inches away from John’s. The other man put his head back against the cushions and grinned dangerously up at Rip.

“We’ve been here before.”

The edge of John’s tongue darted out, swiping across his lips as his dark eyes, and Rip hated the lump he had to swallow in his throat as he finished wrapping the bandage around.

“Stop it.”

John pretened to look innocent, quirking up an eyebrow. “Stop what?”

“I could leave you here to die. It’d be your own damn fault.”

“You’d never.”

“I would.”

“Nah,” John said. Confidently, he blew out smoke and shrugged. “You like me too much.”

“I do bloody not.”

“Who else is calling you on a Saturday night?”

Rip hadn’t even realised it was the weekend. He sat back with no answer. Time seemed to pass differently, these days. The Bureau wasn’t exactly a 9 to 5 job, on account that time happened all at once, everywhere, and could be attacked at any time. Rip didn’t even know what year it was, some days. It was easy to forget that he was always out of time. Rip existed before he was born and after his family had died, and without a mission that important, he wasn’t sure that he belonged much of anywhere anymore.

Nobody called him on a Saturday night, John was right about that. Nobody called him because nobody cared.

“You should lie down,” Rip said. The humour had leaked out of his voice and face, as he jerked a head towards the couch. “Rest. I’ll get a blanket.”

“Mate, I didn’t mean-”

“I know you didn’t. Lie down.”

Speaking quickly, Rip stood and left the room. Absently, he wandered to the closet on the first floor landing, where he knew John kept spare towels and bed sheets. It was a strange sort of order for a man like John to have, although Rip supposed that John needed a lot of towels to clean up blood and chalk and other things that he’d drawn on the floors with.

A hollow feeling settled in his chest. Rip knew it well.

Taking a breath, Rip took a moment to compose himself before grabbing a plaid blanket from a shelf and heading back into the living room. John had lain back on the sofa, but looked up eagerly when Rip walked in.

“Listen, Rip-”

“Its fine,” Rip said, cutting him off. Crossing the room, Rip unfolded the blanket and threw it loosely over John, carefully avoiding eye contact. “Try to get some sleep.”

As he turned to go, John caught his arm. Fingers curled around Rip’s forearm, keeping him with one foot to escape.

“I thought you would understand. That’s why I called _you_ , Rip. Not as a second choice.”

The smugness was gone from John’s tone. Whether from blood loss or something else, his voice was quieter than usual, but still filled the room. It took a hold of Rip’s senses; legs unable to walk away, he slowly sank back down onto the coffee table, sitting beside John against all reason.

“What am I supposed to understand?” Rip asked.

“Me.” John hadn’t let go yet. His fingers had trailed from Rip’s forearm to his hand as Rip sat down, and now John’s thumb was rubbing distractedly along the back of Rip’s hand. “Why I do this. Why I went out tonight. I thought you of all people would get it, in a way that Chas doesn’t.”

Rip shook his head a little, not following. “Why _did_ you go out tonight?”

“‘Cause this is temporary,” John said, gesturing down at his bleeding side. “I’ll heal. But if I stayed in like I should’ve, and someone died? That doesn’t go away. There’s this . . . this little voice, in the back of my head, all the sodding time. Every time I think about stoppin’, every time I want to give up, it says _what if I could’ve made a difference_. I wish it would go a-bloody-way, but it never does.”

John’s eyes had lost their focus as he spoke, seeing something far away. The hand in Rip’s twisted, holding on tightly. Then with a shudder, John came back to life, blinking and looking up at Rip.

“That’s why,” he finished.

The words echoed through Rip’s mind, travelling through his body in a shudder of recognition, right down to his soul. Rip found himself nodded slightly as John spoke, and when the other man finally met his gaze again, Rip could see himself reflected perfectly in them. And yeah, he understood.

Squeezing John’s fingers lightly, Rip stood once more.

“Get some rest, John. I’ll make sure the world doesn’t end while you’re asleep,” Rip said.

As he took a step away, just as his hand was about to lose contact with John’s, Rip felt a new pressure as his hand passed by John’s head. John pressed Rip’s wrist to his lips, pressing just a feather kiss against it, right on the pulse point. A shiver went down Rip’s spine. Then John let go, leaving Rip to take a few steps away as his heart gave a jumpstart.

Rip went to make a cup of tea. By the time he got back, leaning against the doorframe, he could see the gentle fall and rise of John’s chest as he slept. He told himself that he was only going to watch for a minute to make sure that John was alright. He was only going to stay until he finished his drink. After all, Rip had to get back to work.

By the time sunlight streamed through the window, its rays hitting John’s face until he stirred and woke, Rip’s half-drunk tea was cold on the coffee table.

“Morning, sunshine,” he said.

John jumped slightly, throwing a hand over his eyes and twisting to see him. Rip felt his lip quirk up at the sight. He was sitting on an armchair beside the sofa, with a heavy book that he’d chosen from one of the shelves open in his lap.

“That’s my line,” John replied. His voice was thick with sleep, and he didn’t seem fully awake yet as he blearily looked over. “You’re still here.”

“I wanted to make sure that you were alright. And do some light reading,” Rip said, lifting the book. It was thicker than his head. “How’re you feeling?”

After a moment, John replied. “Hungry.”

“I’ll put the kettle on. I assume you have something edible in the fridge, and not just . . . newt’s legs, or something?”

“That’s a stereotype, and a wrong one.” John pointed an accusing finger at Rip, pushing himself into a sitting position before his lips twitched upwards. “I actually have frogs eyes in the fridge. It’s a bugger when I confuse ‘em with the pickled onions.”

Rip made a face. “That’s what you get for eating pickled onions.”

“Yeah, yeah _, snob_ -” John waved a hand. “You making breakfast or what?”

“I’ll do toast,” Rip replied, putting the book onto the coffee table in front of him before standing. “I’m not sure I’d trust eating anything else in this house.”

He was halfway to the kitchen when John’s voice followed him.

“Thanks. For staying. You didn’t have to, I – I know a lotta people wouldn’t have.”

Pausing in the doorway, Rip looked over his shoulder with a nod.

“You were right,” he said. “I have a little voice in my head, too. It said not to leave you.”

In the new light, John watched him steadily for a moment. Understanding passed between them, like so much water under the bridge, flooding from a dam of their emotions. Rip wasn’t sure what to make of this . . . thing, with John. Sometimes lover, sometimes confidant, sometimes someone he could bloody strangle – even then, they understood one another.

When John had first talked about magic, Rip had thought that John was mad. And Rip was from the future, so he believed in a lot of things that normal people would dismiss out of hand. Stranger things prevailed in Rip’s world. When he had met a strange man in a bar with eyes as tired as his, who said _magic_ and _demons_ with such conviction, and Rip’s first instinct had been to laugh. Then he had seen a little of John’s world. One thing led to another, and they had fought a demon.

John had said, _I need your help_. He’d given Rip bullets made of ash, and told him to aim for the heart. Rip had loaded his gun without hesitation.

Before he ever believed John, Rip trusted him. There had to be a reason for it.

John’s lip twitched up in a smile, breaking the moment. “I don’t suppose your little voice is sayin’ something about heating up a can of beans on the toast, too, is it?”

Rip huffed a laugh, “If you’re lucky.”

“Gotta be, ain’t I? Somehow I met you.”

_Stranger things have happened_ , Rip thought, walking into the kitchen so that John couldn’t see the smile that grew on his face. Coincidence was the basic law of the universe. Time and space were chaos wound together with a thin thread that was so easily tangled, unwoven, and cut short. Rip knew this all too well. Meeting John was a coincidence. Going to help him was a choice. The fact that he kept coming back was lunacy. _And yet_ . . .

If John was right, the only thing luck had to do with any of it was the fact that they were both still somehow alive, despite the things they saw and the wars that they fought.

The gas came on with a hiss, as Rip put a pan on the stovetop and emptied a can of baked beans into it.

“I’m not keeping you, am I?” John asked, as Rip sat back in the armchair. Balancing the plate on his knees, John closed his eyes in bliss, smelling the food. “I’d hate to think that all of time is getting buggered up while you’re making me tea.”

Rip thought about the stack of paperwork on his desk, and the extra work he had to do, and the ever-growing list of creases to iron out of the Bureau.

Then he shook his head.

“Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow,” he said.

The universe might not make any sense. But sitting with John on a Sunday morning, eating beans on toast as they argued about the best things to have on a cooked breakfast, Rip thought that maybe that was okay. In all of the chaos and confusion, he had ended up in that place, at that time, and John was smiling in a way that reached his eyes, and maybe – just maybe – he was a lucky man after all.


End file.
